AI that Delivers: How Simpson Strong-Tie Boosted PM Output by 10x with Productside

Executive Summary 

What happens when a market leader decides “less AI hype, more AI habits”? Earlier this year, Simpson Strong-Tie brought in Productside to level up their digital PMs with our AI for Product Managers course. This was part of their larger initiative to modernize their Product Management practices for more efficiency and effectiveness.  

In 16 instructor-led hours, 19 Product Managers learned practical playbooks (not magic tricks): how to use tools like Copilot and ChatGPT to speed discovery, writing briefs and PRDs, as well as how to objectively decide which customer problems deserve AI inside the product (and which don’t). 

Follow-up interviews showed the impact: efficiency gains, sharper strategic thinking, and better cross-team collaboration. Bottom line: targeted training turned curiosity into competence, accelerating AI adoption and unlocking real productivity and innovation, without breaking the product (or the trust). 

About Simpson Strong-Tie 

Simpson Strong-Tie makes the hardware that keeps buildings standing: structural connectors, fasteners, and anchors trusted by pros and DIYers alike. Famous for quality and relentless innovation, they’ve been leveling up digitally too, helping customers design smarter with Simpson parts (not just buy them). Their Digital Solutions team is the engine behind that shift, modernizing product management and weaving AI into workflows and products to deliver clearer choices, faster specs, and more customer value, without compromising what the brand is known for: rock-solid reliability. 

The Challenge 

Simpson Strong-Tie knew AI mattered; the readiness gap did too. They were up against: 

• AI fluency all over the map. From “what’s a prompt?” to “I dabble,” which left powerful tools underused and impact uneven. 
• Fragmented workflows = lost time. Manual rewrites, research rabbit holes, and context switching crowded out strategic work. 
• “Put AI in the product”… but how? Unclear paths to scalable, customer-centric, real-value AI features slowed momentum. 

Previous training had leveled up discovery, but the team needed applied AI: practical skills to streamline ops, sharpen insight, and build smarter products, confidently and at scale. 

The Solution: Productside’s AI for Product Managers Course 

Enter a 16-hour, instructor-led sprint built for busy PMs who want less hype and more “use it now”, it was the perfect fit for the needs of Simpson Strong-Tie’s product managers. We focused on three practical pillars: 

1. AI Strategy: Spot and prioritize AI opportunities by ROI, feasibility, and customer value (not hype). 
2. AI-Powered Product Process: Treat Large Language Models (LLMs) as your PM assistant to speed discovery, planning, and execution without losing judgment. 
3. Confident AI Decision-Making: Explain the value in plain English, align stakeholders, and set clear guardrails so AI work survives Legal and Finance. 

How it ran: fast lectures, lively discussion, hands-on drills. PMs practiced prompting techniques, tackled ethics and risk with simple checklists, and used a problem-first evaluation framework to decide where AI belongs in their products, and where it doesn’t. 

Implementation Journey 

In late May 2025, 19 PMs jumped in. We designed the flow for momentum and Monday-ready usage: 

• Hands-on labs: Live, click-and-try sessions where PMs ran AI tools in real time (no spectator sport). 
• Team sprints: Small-group exercises to promote peer learning and cross-functional thinking. 
• Debriefs that stick: Quick share-outs to compare prompts, swap patterns, and lock in best practices. 

Post-course, several PMs replayed the learning for their own teams (lunch-and-learns, internal Looms, and template drops) creating ripple effects across departments and regions. 

Results & Impact 

Efficiency Gains 

• Dave Brainard, Software Product Manager: Post-training, Dave upped his AI usage 10x. He now drafts PRDs, runs competitive scans, and rewrites release notes with AI, saving hours and leveling up quality.  

“The Productside AI course was transformative for me… It multiplied my time spent using AI tools by tenfold.” 

• Matt Shacklett, Group Product Manager: AI now powers his annual-planning framework and stakeholder-specific messaging, shaving ~1 hour per task and keeping comms crisp. 

“Just the ability to wordsmith for different audiences has been a huge time saver.” 

• Abby Burkhalter, Software Product Manager: Already AI-curious, Abby widened her use. She fed a PRD and design specs to her AI assistant and generated a full Getting Started Guide, a task that used to drag now ships fast. 

“It’s much easier now to get the teams I work with to understand the product!”  

Strategic Thinking 

• A Senior Software Manager from the team: Flipped the script from “AI for features” to AI for strategy. She outlined a 40-page strategy document for exec review (clearer thinking, cleaner narrative). 

“It was a great opportunity to learn more about AI impacting life.” 

Team Enablement 

• Russ Anderson, Engineering Technology Manager: Ran a mini version of the course for his global team, kicking off new AI initiatives. Along the way: fixed a decade-old macro issue and mentored a PM breaking into new markets. 

“AI allows us to get more done with the current staff—it’s a force multiplier.” 

Lessons Learned & Future Outlook 

The big unlock: AI adoption isn’t a tool problem. It’s a mindset. The teams that got the most lift treated AI like a practice instead of a novelty. They called out three habits that compound: 

• Reps over reads: Practice regularly to build real fluency. 
• Share the sauce: Trade prompts and use cases to accelerate team learning. 
• Guardrails on: Keep ethics and privacy front-and-center as usage scales. 

What’s next at Simpson Strong-Tie? Double-down and ship. The team is exploring chatbot interfaces, intelligent selectors, and customer-facing AI features, while the AI Center of Excellence pilots ideas sparked during training. Momentum → experiments → impact. 

Stop AI Theater. Start Shipping. 

If your “AI strategy” is still a sparkly slide, give your PMs the reps, guardrails, and playbooks to turn prompts into P&L. Productside’s AI for Product Managers is a hands-on, outcome-first program that builds real capability: opportunity scoring, responsible workflows, and reusable artifacts you’ll actually run. Ready to upgrade curiosity into impact? 

Learn more and enroll: https://productside.com/ai-product-management-training-course/ 

About Productside  

For over 25 years, Productside has  delivering expert-led product management certification programs, product management team training, product management framework tools, and resources that support your product management transformation. 

We help product teams build real skills, not just check boxes. 

From hands-on workshops to templates, blogs, podcasts, case studies, and guides on product metrics, product roadmap development, and more, everything we create is built to move product work (and product careers) forward. Learn more at www.productside.com